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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

economist.com

471–480 of 734 posts

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#471
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Tbh its constantly surprising why Americans view the CCPs zero-covid policy as a failure. Even the most pessimistic reports (based on actual facts, not tabloid-driven wishful thinking) acknowledges that China has avoided at least 2 million+ deaths through their zero covid policy. Is the right to life no longer a human right? Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China propaganda that we're no longer able…

More likely it’s many people who are of the mindset that lockdowns did nothing/weren’t worth it, that’s prevalent in the US. If you think the activity is useless then it would look pretty bad given all the downsides of lockdowns

Probably pretty useless against Omicron. It did its job for Delta and predecessor variants.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#472
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good comment, but rather than tens of millions of new citizens, they would get tens of millions of new insurgents. Nearly the whole population of Ukraine is involved in the war effort in some way, and it would be impossible to break this completely. The only thing that could be given to Russia with the conquest of Ukraine is the option to turn into Afghanistan instead of North Korea.

> they would get tens of millions of new insurgents. I doubt it. Most people will be passive and will just live their lives. They will get a few for sure, but they won't be able to do all that much. It's not like the ruling elite cares if there's an occasional killing, after all, they already use that method themselves, see the list of Russian businessmen and manager deaths.

Not everyone would be involved in directly fighting, but there are intelligence networks, supply networks, opportunities for discreet sabotage and falsifying critical data, and many other ways that people can support a resistance movement that would continue even in a fully occupied Ukraine.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#473
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying that it's over because technology isn't making people's lives better is wrong, because that's what "technology" does, and it doesn't appear to be slowing down to me. I see two errors here. Defining technology to be "that thing which makes people's lives better" feels weak, even disingenuous, because trivially nuclear missiles and weaponised smallpox are technologies that fail your test. Therefore, there exis…

> scandals over the erosion of democratic values, decline in education, attention disorders, social fragmentation, childhood depression, pollution and e-waste, conflict minerals, energy consumption, loss of privacy, dignity and rights... Must I go on? Please don't. OK, I get it now. Your point above wasn't about "peak tech" at all[1], it was about this part, which you didn't mention. I think you're wrong, FWIW, but a…

> In either the sense of "peak tech startup investment activity" or "technological progress as commonly undeerstood".

"Peak tech" is two words I just pulled out of my arse an hour ago.

Let's define it together.

For me it's a palpable sentiment not a definition. But some people here seem to "get it".

The "tech industry" is not just an activity, it's a culture. Many of us, including (particularly?) developers are increasingly fed-up and disappointed by the direction digital technology is going. Not because we dislike technology, but because of what a minority are doing with it to gain power and wealth to the detriment of everyone else.

I don't think things will change for those investors who are smart enough to see the writing on the wall and switch (as they are doing) to physical technologies. FWIW I love the startup mind-set.

But this cynical flogging of surveillance capitalism, screwing over users, social control and smartphone bandwagon has been sticking in people's throats way beyond this community for some time.

The pain and anxiety equals or outweighs the perceived benefits - not just to a few geeks - but to people like my parents, siblings and neighbours.

That's "peak tech" for me.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#474

So, can someone explain to me why I can't get ANY chips for anything at all? Everything is out of stock that I use in my designs (Audio processing equipment). microprocessors, microcontrollers, ADCs, DACs, audio codecs, memory. Even bread and butter diodes were hard to source a few months ago. You name it, Mouser/Farnell/Digikey/the manufacturer doesn't have it. And if they do, it's priced at 500% MSRP. It may be "sw…

Very different areas of semi. The Economist article is focused on the high end, most advanced nodes and their fabless users like AMD, NVidia.

What you list is either analog of older nodes (~90 to 40nm). It's a very different world, with often different players. TSMC plays in the digital old nodes, but as I understand is not very motivated in investing in much new capacity, and try to push customers toward 22nm ULP (may work for some, but not all). Others are investing, but it takes time.

So you start to see a glut at the high end, but still constraints in the analog / old nodes.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he? I feel like everyone said this about Putin and now the narrative has changed and he's an unstable madman whose going to launch a nuke if he loses too badly in his war. Like many politicians, Xi is ruthlessly self-interested. His actions that allow him to consolidate power aren't necessarily in the best interests of China.

> now the narrative has changed and he's an unstable madman whose going to launch a nuke if he loses too badly in his war. Yes, this sort of narrative plays a lot better when describing someone you're actively at war with. Along with the fact that you are always winning the war. Ukraine has been winning the war with Russia for about 9 months now, according to the media.

"Ukraine has been winning the war with Russia for about 9 months now, according to the media."

What media?

In the beginning most reporting was that it would be over in a week. Then Russia had that little blunder with their first offensive. Then again most reporting was that the russian artillery steamroller would squash the Ukrainians. Now most media favor the Ukrainians due to their recent successes. Also goals and frames of reference changed. In the beginning winning for Ukraine was not letting Russia roflstomping them. Now it is throwing all russian military out of their country.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#476

We've reached or are approaching "peak tech". The other day we were discussing Pablo Azar, "Computer Saturation and the Productivity Slowdown" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, October 6, 2022) [1] Simply reinventing systems and deliberately obsoleting stuff to create fake demand is over. The metaverse isn't hoing to happen. People are fatigued with tech. We're entering a different era in wh…

I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech, and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for various form of artificial intelligence, and the rest of tech. Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to become actually useful and desired by the general public. Because of that, there will continue to be a push t…

Huge amounts of our current tech industry have yet to prove they can even make a profit. I'm pretty sure than in a few more months we'll find out they can't.

I work for a fairly large, fairly successful company and I'm having to explain to my team how to quantify the business value of a product, like showing that the value provided to customer in terms of dollars is greater than the cost of the service we provide. It's an uphill battle, because we've lived in a bubble so long people don't even remember this basic fundamental of business.

The tech industry exploded because of cheap money, but by and large has completely failed to extract actual value from the technology.

Even when I list out the "tech" products I do use frequently (Uber, Door Dash and the like) I realize that the products they offer are basically investor charity since they cannot be sustained indefinitely at the price point they're offered (and they don't make sense if they charge more).

Of the actual technology I use, the vast majority has barely changed in a decade. The most impressive thing I've purchased in years is finally getting an RTX 3070 and that is just "neat!". Anyone who remembers the release of the original iPhone will instantly recognize that despite the trillions spend in the tech industry, nothing quite as game changing as that has come out since. Google search was also better back then.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both wrong. Many people subscribed to each belief. The economists, globalists and industry people believed that it could never happen. The military, nationalist and political folks figured it would be inevitable, or at very least if it happened they had to win. Many people subscribed to the argument of the economists and globalists in more democratic countries because it was a comforting illusion the people in…

it seems that only our instutions, or big chunks of the whole global trade system, want this war; but this this point, a lot of those systems are automated by rules and regulations and a overly complicated network that become inentelligible to the people 'running' it. nobody that is alive and sentient (in the traditional sense) wants a war... and yet, we all see it looming.

Sounds a lot like how the assassination of the heir appearant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to the UK declaring war on Germany for marching through Belgium.

No one wanted the war, many knew it would be horrible, and yet it led to the most nightmarish collective human experience in human history.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for China to attack fabs in Japan but China attacking Japan is a WW3 level escalation without a doubt. Invading Taiwan may or may not be. Japan is very able to defend itself against China and the Chinese know that. That doesn't mean the Japanese would win a war with China, but who knows? Who would think Ukraine could take on Russia? If China seriously went to war with the US and Japan China could be blo…

Depends on how Sino-US competition veers. As important as TW is to rejuvenation narrative, it's ultimately the consolation prize versus dismantling US east asian security architecture and securing regional+ hegemony. That's the grand finale battle for the lightcone of future PRC security/prosperity. >Japan is very able to defend Japan (and SKR, and TW, and even PH) like most US allies in island chain are are heavily…

The issue is in such a war China is also cut off. A major point of their south china sea claims is to ensure that there is no peaceful way to block oil (and other products) being delivered to Chinese ports. In an attack on Japan (that doesn't turn into MAD) China also loses this supply chain and becomes reliant on Russia for energy imports and the infratructure for that reliance isn't in place yet and is also a major weakness.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#479
post #188

To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel. It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.

How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to engage in WW3.

I mean, yeah, they're great, but come on. Most of the important stuff runs on stuff that's decades old.

Re: Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown

#480

Thanks (O/T: copy-pasting text into vim to even read TFA high times to flag ad-ridden, basically unreadable content, or not link to it in the first place)

>> or not link to it in the first place Please, do not suggest this. You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to go to the extra effort to read the content. And then the rest of us can also decide for ourselves.

Yes, please more of this thinking. With all of the choice we have now, personal agency is not valued at a time when it needs reinforcing the most. Take care, stranger.
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